I see from recent local reports that Maltese pig breeders may be caught in the European Union’s sanctions folly against Russia. That is a very small, insignificant part of the otherwise vast, wide-ranging impact that the negative economic measures have had on the rest of Europe’s agricultural and food producers. Malta of course has to play ball in this situation, when it previously would have been a golden and timely opportunity to surge into a new and ever-expanding market.

What makes this callous sanctions business so infuriating to most EU member states is that they have been force-fed, Guantanamo-style, by the Americans over the crisis in Ukraine. Even worse, we have had US Vice President Joe Biden revealing, at Harvard, that America’s leadership had to embarrass Europe to impose the economic measures against Russia because the EU was clearly opposed to such a move. Rightly so, for the sanctions have, so far at least, only served to self-inflict a crisis in its hitherto highly-successful agricultural and food industry. In the eyes of most European farmers, producers and employees, rather than shooting itself in the foot, the EU has committed harakiri.

Predictably, many non-EU countries have rushed into the void left by European suppliers, and here we’re talking about billions’ worth of products every year. The Brazilians, for example, have quickly gone into a samba frenzy by winning contracts for deliveries to Russia they would otherwise have lost to European competition. Their new deliveries will now help fill the 57 per cent gap of imported dairy products created when Russia, in retaliation to US and EU sanctions, introduced an embargo on certain agricultural products from the EU, US, Australia, Canada, and Norway.

Suffice to say that a Brazilian delegation, comprised of 37 private companies, recently attended the Moscow International Exhibition of World Food where, with one solitary stroke, it managed to obtain $106 million in contracts.

But it is not just the Brazilians who are exploiting the EU’s timid policy of ritually dancing to American dicta-tunes. Since the embargo was announced, Russia has had fruitful talks with several other countries about increasing agricultural exports from them. They include China, Turkey, Serbia, Egypt, Mauritius, Ecuador, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Paraguay, Guatemala, Morocco, Kenya, Argentina, Lebanon, and fellow teeny-weenies, the Faroe Islands.

It will not be easy for European suppliers to shrug off the challenge from these new markets to satisfy Russia’s gargantuan needs. After all, even if the Ukraine crisis is eventually resolved, what could be the pretext for the next round of anti-Russia sanctions inspired by the US and obediently imposed by the EU?

As for our pig breeders, already under pressure from other difficult market conditions for far too long, they can only hope they could somehow get their hands on some of the €165 million aid package the EU is promising to European farmers and suppliers who have been hit by the imposition of anti-Russia sanctions.

And from where will the EU get the money to offer such aid? The taxpayers, of course. So while EU member states are today prohibited from financially assisting State and other industries and utilities in distress to save jobs and help families, it is OK to hand out millions to helpless farmers and breeders denied their markets because of an unwise political decision.

Something’s definitely wrong here and no ode to joy can fix it.

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Art, genius and the slit...

I really do not think too many people actually like the so-called art installation erected at the corner of Ġlormu Cassar Avenue. But then, no one seems to have liked anything about the new entrance into Valletta that has seen the ancient notion of a fortified city gate turned into a slick, minimalist slit.

There has been so much loose talk about art, genius and posterity that one begins to wonder whether one is talking about the same thing that the other has been serenading. But of course someone who has, through the years, made thousands upon thousands of euros (even for submitting what eventually became discarded designs) in the same process of spoiling the entrance to our capital city, he is bound to sing the praises of what we have sadly ended up with, i.e. a monstrously inappropriate Parliament building greeting you as you join the daily masses through the slit, and a comical hotchpotch for what used to be one of the finest theatres in the whole of Europe.

If this is genius, then I’m God’s gift to newspaper columns! The roofless theatre concept had been condemned by the people who mattered – actors, writers, drama companies, directors, producers, theatre gurus, critics etc – from the very outset, but the Gonzi administration had resisted and gone on with this incredible sore thumb segment of the Piano project. Today, what was once a revered piece of Valletta wartime ruins has become a national joke.

During this year’s magnificently-organised Notte Bianca, the roofless theatre was put to a dire test when rain started falling during an evening of Maltese popular songs. “Singing in the rain” was the most frequent term used in a vast array of light-hearted posts and photographs on Facebook and other social media. Just a week earlier, Tony Cassar Darien’s highly-successful play “Il-Kennies tal-Ġenna”, based on life in the city through the centuries, got its biggest laugh of the evening when one of the author’s characters made a remark on this architectural clutter.

People still cannot accept it and it would make sense if someone in the near future were to decide, in some inventive way, to put a ceiling on it. He hasn’t got to be a genius.

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Hooray for Sweden

To all those who believe there is no alternative to Palestinian statehood by way of inching towards a Middle East peace settlement, the news that Sweden has now officially recognised Palestine as a sovereign state is certainly good news. Even more heartening was Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom’s retort that Washington will not be the one to decide Sweden’s policies after the US had criticised Stockholm’s plans.

Wallstrom conceded that the new Swedish government expected to “get criticism” after its announcement on Palestinian statehood. One wonders: does that include Brussels? Sweden is an EU member, so is the EU to follow suit or can member states now make different foreign policy decisions? If it is the latter, and by the same reckoning, can member states then unilaterally decide to abandon the anti-Russia sanctions offensive?

It’s a little bit confusing, no?